Three issues of Speaking of Faith

APM's Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett is a radio program and podcast that I do not listen to all the time, but I keep a close eye on whatever comes up in the feed. And then I try to to pick out issues that appeal to me most. And if I did not think to pick myself, it happens frequently that a reader of the blog alerts me to one of the SOF releases - as happened again recently.

I had already discarded the idea of listening to The Meaning of Intelligence even though the subject on intelligence and how ideas of intelligence are constructed have my interest. It seemed out of place in a show about faith, but than my reader rescued me. Of course, the construction of intelligence is about faith. We have placed faith in intelligence and a very specific kind of school-intelligence at that. Krista Tippett's guest Mike Rose tells of his research and uncovering of other kinds of intelligence and our inconsistent cultural appreciation of it. How can we be anti-intellectual and yet at the same time under-appreciate the practical skills, the handiwork and the amazing intelligence that comes with that and place our esteem and aspiration so singularly on the main stream intellectual academic intelligence? And what do we lose in the process?

Quite interesting were also two other recent issues that I listened through entirely. In Reflections of a former Islamist extremist Tippett spoke with Briton Ed Husain and how he struggled with his mixed Muslem and British identity and how this got him close to Islamism and made him recoil afterward. In Whale songs and Elephant love the guest was biologist Kate Payne who tells about the complexity of communication between large mammals and apart from reflecting this she also relates about her depression and how all of this meaningfully came together.

More Speaking of Faith:
Preserving Ojibwe,
The story and God,
Fragility and Humanity,
The Sunni-Shia divide and the future of Islam,
Wangari Maathai.